Memoirs
I was a grade school cellist in another life-far from the one I live now,
twenty-seven
slightly burnt at the edges
from too many things to name
without crying or going nearly insane.
My teacher loved me,
she put me in honor orchestra
my first year.
And my Meisel was my best friend,
dust of rosin coated her frame
zealously.
Soon I am consumed
by another flame.
My mother lit the first match.
Scratch, scratch
to get out of this-
it was of no use.
Did you know what you'd sewn
when you took me from school,
when you took my future
into your weak hands
and threw it far from academia,
out where right became wrong?
The throngs of youth
intimidated you,
the books in school
made you rabid, made you afraid.
Sex ed, evolution,
secular humanism, abortion-
how you despaired for the lives
of those in school
while setting mine
somewhere behind
the dusty shelves
in your forgotten mind.
Mother, mother
what made you so blind?
How I rotted in that house for years,
as you sat in your room
and stared and prayed
to the television each day-
to save my soul,
to throw away your own,
but what has been shown
to be the outcome?
You still pray,
you still say
you still think
that the weather
changed
just for you
because
you prayed.
And to you the same God
who makes hurricanes
is not the same devil
who sends thunder and rain, perilous strain
to an unholy land
where the wicked gain strength from their deeds.
Your strange philosophies
are grievances to me,
incoherencies
once force-fed,
now vomited
like my daily bread.
And I hold
in my hand
things you never gave to me:
a life, a future,
strength,
and a family.
How I got from there to here
is still unknown to me.
I went straight from a GED
to belonging
to an honor society.
I went from sleeping in a car
as a teen
when you were kicked off
of disability
to raising a daughter
and house tidying.
And here I am,
wondering
where you are:
mother who read me stories
when I was three,
the one who bandaged my knees,
you are not the same woman who I now see.
Poetry by intothehaze
Read 775 times
Written on 2005-10-05 at 23:57
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